


Renounce Superficial Dreams

by EireneShulah



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Ancient Jedi, Gen, Jedi, The Dark Side of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 12:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15509601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EireneShulah/pseuds/EireneShulah
Summary: How does a person fall to the Dark Side?And why does one come back?And at what cost?





	Renounce Superficial Dreams

"You seek forgiveness. But you know it must come with a price. What price are you ready to pay?" Grandmaster asks, his voice cold and stark as the snows of Rhen Var.

No. Not like Rhen Var, There, beautiful and strange, Rir Beasts roam and snow flakeflowers grow for them to eat.

"Any price you want, master."

"And if that price is, your name? Your freedom? Your future? Your present? Your past?"

"I will pay the price, master."

The Rir Beasts' eyes are bright and flagrant, thousands of rainbows coiled into two giant orbs. And the beast's fur is white, blending into snows of his home planet.

"Do you really understand what are you going to sacrifice?"

"Yes, master."

The abyss of the Force at his feet looks like the beasts' eyes: so bright, so vibrant, so multicolored.

"Your wristbones will be broken"

"I know, master."

He feels he is doing the right thing. At long last, he is doing something right.

"Sethy Alein, apostate, former master of the Jedi Order is accused of interfering in Order operation at Eriadu, of mulitple murders without legal cause, of neglecting a padawan, of freely giving up his body and spirit to the Dark Side, of dissemination of sensitive data related to the Republic operations..."

***

Upon meeting the Rir Beast for the first time, Sethy killed him. He did it our of fear.

He didn't think, he just aimed right between two vibrant, glowing orbs lighting the night, threw a grenade, rolled behind a snow pile---and then a sad realisation slowly dawned on him. _It was a living, walking fairy-tale_ , he though.  _A living, walking fairy-tale I've just destroyed_.

That was when he had finally stopped---for the first time in five years. He stopped, and then he thought. 

"Is this what I've left the Order for? For a chance to turn into a paranoid murderer ready to throw a grenade in anything that moves?", he asked himself.

Back then, it was way different. Back then there was a plethora of beautiful ideas, an endless abyss of meaningful words! He spoke of justice chained by absurd rules and unneccessary regulations; he spoke about freedom of choice and freedom of thought; he spoke about downtrodden who got no help from the Jedi.

"It was back then. And now here I stand, with a dead Rir Beast at my feet", he thought.

Sethy was not officially a Sith. There was no Sith state on the horizon, not even a noticable Sith cult. So what he did was, he gave a mouthful to his former master, gave a coult to his green apperentice, jumped into his service starship and---somehow not apprehended, be it by chance or by negligence---safely jumped into Hyperspace.

He was drifting among unknown stars when he realised, he must be a Sith now that he renounced his Jedi vows and ideals. But what even was "a Sith"?

"It is a view, an aught, a miracle, a revolution and castle at the end of the world. It's anything the Jedi are not allowed to," he would say many years later, looking back at his experience.

He wouldn't mean it, of course. A sad joke, nothing more. Reality, and he knew it better than anyone, was way less optimistic. But those boys and girls of any age and gender, who eagerly dive into Darkness in search of themselves---for them it was not a joke. It was the supreme truth and ultimate revelation. This, he also knew too well: back then, Sethy was such a boy.

The very idea of rejecting self-restraint, rejecting any boundaries, was intoxicating. And his spirit, so fiery, so eager, was tired of restraints. He could never know in his Jedi life that one can get high on joy and despair, fear and wrath. That one can grow addicted to them.

 

Soon he suddenly was not alone any more. His friends followed him. Not his apperentice, though; the green rat was steadily going through his Jedi trials, hoping to apprehend his rogue teacher when the time comes. 

Friends' arrival made him rethink his plans, and in two months they became that good-looking Sith cult the Galaxy had sorely lacked before. It was one Sith of fun and games. They invented a strict code of conduct, prescribing and proscribing even more than the Jedi one (but opposite things). They sought students. They organised survival battles and sometimes survived...

In a year, there were three people left from a dozen, and they still had no enemies. But that didn't make them stop.

***

Whatever they were, they were not villains. They had never fell low enough to gather non-Force sensitive crowds to whip them with lightning or blaster them down with scattershot lasers. They didn't even impose their rule on anyone. Well, there were some strange fellows who decided to pledge loyalty to the fledgeling Sith cult, but it was their own decision. Though Sethy and his friends felt obligated to protect them sometimes from pirates and other space bandits.

And Nimmerlich was almost a saint anyway.

Sethy found it entertaining to wear a crown, to receive gestures of respect and oaths of loyalty and obedience. It was in accord with his view of himself and his knowledge of the Sith. As time passed, however, he saw himself surrounded with incompenent traitors, and had to execute a dozen or two. It was not enough, but Nimmerlich wouldn't let him continue.

All things considered, though, Sethy was still proud they stopped chattel slavery for good in that sector. They were apostates, but they had their standards.

 

How much longer could they go on? Sethy wouldn't know. The Jedi didn't want to bother with a small cult in the Outer Rim as long as it was small and local. The cult had no time to become anything more than small and local. They were too busy studying Dark Secrets, ruling those strange fellows and infighting.

They soon adapted a peculiar idea that a swordfight is the best way to settle an argument, a choke is the best way to teach your student a lesson. Even Nimmerlich learned to shoot lightning upon hearing footsteps from behind. "I would better apologize for my mistake, than be murdered if that was a traitor", he said.

Sethy was still the soul of the party. Everyone loved him, everyone obeyed him---and those who didn't, for them Sethy had many different but equally painful things up his sleave. Words meant little to them all anyway.

One day all of a sudden they bid each other farewell and went on in opposite directions, leaving behind their home and their life. They were like same-charged particles, simply unable to be together anymore. What drove them forth? What made them go on and on?

Sethy thought, it was their nature. For the Sith are children of change, bound to crave it.

Maybe.

The goals shifted, ideas flickered, life was distorted, like stars on lightspeed. The moons and planets danced like in a whirlygig. Some people died; it was their fault. They shouldn't have stepped in his way.

Sethy was not quite sure if a madman with a vibrosword, asking him to come to his senses was actually Nimmerlich. Anyway, he closed madman's eyes, faltered for a moment, seeing off his spirit, and then set the corpse on fire. The Sith pay due to the dead, even dead enemies. He had written it in the code himself.

 

Five years passed before there was the Rir Beast and Sethy stopped and thought at last.

The vortex of his mistakes dragged him all the way to the bottom. Now he could touch it with his feet, make a push and swim up all the way to the surface.

 

***

"Do you understand, silly thing, that you face eternal confinment?," his former master bellowed.

"I do, master."

"There would be no appeal, Sethy! And you will live on, for hundreds---thousands, maybe---of years. All thousands here, in the Academy, locked within four walls! You'll lose your sanity. You love space so much."

"Maybe, not within four walls. The Academy may move somewhere. It did move quite a lot in the past."

The former master looked at him in silent disapproval. He's just proposed a way out. A chance to fly away into new life, without any charges, a chance to return---in a hundred years or so---and be a respected Jedi Master again. 

"Don't worry over me, master, please," Sethy smiled. "I accept my punishment freely and gladly, and I understand everything. I just really want it."

"But how would you live without stars, without the Galaxy? You've always dreamt..."

"I have the Force, don't I? I can use it to help navigate spaceships and coordinate our fleets. Besides, learning those techniques would provide me with a nice distraction."

The Jedi shook his head. 

"My silly, insane boy," he sighed. "But your name! What about your name?"

"And what about my name? Would they all forget it just because the Council ruled so?"

 

***

A rusty Coruscant dawn bathed Meditation Garden in its light, giving bronze tint to Yavin great palm-trees and slender Alderaanian birches. 

"What are you doing here, my master so young?" asked Yoda.

Humming sound of hoverchair made Master Hermit aware of his presence even before he spoke.

"What am I doing here? Not sure, but it seems I'm looking for something. Myself, most likely. Do you perchance remember, what is my name?"

Yoda sadly drooped his ears.

"Have told you many times: I don't. Accustomed to calling you "my master", I was."

"Ah, that's it. Padawan, knight, master, apperentice, grandmaster, hermit...Don't we all lose our only true name in a swarm of false titles?"

"Highbrow it sounds. Not true, most likely," said Yoda dismissively. "The transport is ready. Are you?"

"Oh, of course I am." He nervously struck his braid. "I am."

Dire shortage of hands in ongoing war made Yoda rewoke his sentence. A skilled general on the front lines is much more useful than cabinet tactician and coordinator.

"Not ready, you seem. Afraid of something. Battles?"

He saw more battles in his short free life than Yoda had seen in all those years.

"I am not afraid, my ex-apperentice. I am excited. I will see stars, I will jump into Hyperspace...it is exciting. Or should be, anyway."

"Exciting, it is not. Dull, tedious, dangerous, maybe is. The war it is, not a merry festival."

Master Hermit nodded and stroke his braid again. 

 

"How do you think, is there a chance I'll find my name somewhere on a battlefield?"


End file.
